How is smash tv show doing

Episode guide. Play trailer Drama Musical. Creator Theresa Rebeck. Top credits Creator Theresa Rebeck. See more at IMDbPro. Episodes Browse episodes. Top Top-rated. Clip Smash: Karen Sings. Smash: Never Give Up. Smash: Rewrite. Smash: Terry Cuts Ivy's Number. Smash: Liza And Tom Sing. Smash: Terry's Off. Smash: In An Elevator. Smash: A Prelude. Smash: Break A Leg. Photos Top cast Edit. Savannah Wise Jessica as Jessica. Wesley Taylor Bobby as Bobby. Jenny Laroche Dancer as Dancer ….

The hour-long network drama about the behind-the-scenes of Broadway had a promising start with a stellar pilot and solid audience numbers during its first season. What went wrong? Unfortunately, the show would tarnish quickly. The cracks started showing in the first season as too many plots distracted from the whole. Smash was at its best when the writing focused on shop talk, giving audiences an inside peek into the workings of Broadway.

NBC would not participate in this story. Instead, I spoke with more than a half-dozen people who worked on the first season — all of whom would talk to me only under the condition of anonymity out of fear of angering NBC, DreamWorks, and a number of other people — to try to figure out what went so horribly wrong with Smash. The network had been down so long, it had become a punch line. One bad season had followed another.

Then the well-respected Greenblatt arrived. Then, as the entertainment president at Showtime for six years, he turned the identity-less HBO imitator into a prestigious, growing pay-cable channel.

NBC was lucky to get him. In addition to his talents as a television executive, Greenblatt is a devoted theater geek. While at Showtime, he also produced a theatrical adaptation of 9 to 5 with Dolly Parton, which had a short Broadway run in Greenblatt originally bought Smash for Showtime in November It had been Spielberg's idea; the star director wanted to create a scripted series about a musical, and if all went well, the fictional musical would actually be developed as a real one on Broadway.

It was an ambitious project. Craig Zadan and Neil Meron, the producing team who specialize in musical theater adaptations for film and television, were already in place as executive producers; Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, Tony winners for Hairspray , were also on board to write Smash 's original music. With Glee having so much success at Fox, the timing seemed perfect for a show for adults about the behind-the-scenes drama of making a Broadway musical.

Rebeck had been involved since Smash 's inception as well. For years, Rebeck had wanted to create a TV series about a Broadway production, and no one had ever bitten. Then she was hired to do exactly that on Smash. According to a story in Variety by Cynthia Littleton, it was Rebeck's off-Broadway play The Understudy , a backstage satire about how theater has been ruined by stunt-casting and celebrity, that sold Spielberg on her.

It was directed by Michael Mayer, who had won the Tony for Spring Awakening , but had never directed television before. At Greenblatt's first upfront presentation in May , when the broadcast networks unveil their new shows to advertisers and the press, he announced that Smash would premiere in midseason and be paired with the second season of the surprise hit The Voice.

No work of popular fiction receives unanimous acclaim. But the pilot for Smash , sent out to journalists shortly after the up-fronts, got a ton of early love from critics, and deservedly so. It set up a world full of compelling characters. Messing and Borle played Julia and Tom, a successful team of songwriters who are also best friends; they begin to write a musical based on the life of Marilyn Monroe, providing the plot's engine.

The music was a combination of pop covers McPhee sang Christina Aguilera's "Beautiful" during an audition scene and original songs, topped off by the catchy "Let Me Be Your Star," a duet and duel between Ivy and Karen as they both audition for the part of Marilyn in Tom and Julia's nascent musical. It was exciting. A show as complicated as Smash — with multiple musical numbers every week that needed to look and sound professional, in addition to the requirements of any television drama an engaging plot and characters — had to be run meticulously.

Any television series can go off the rails if the showrunner loses control, or, conversely, controls too much — if his or her ideas turn out to be bad ones. A creator with aggressive convictions about what the show is or should be is not rare in television, nor is it necessarily a bad thing for a show that has so many non-writers in producing roles. The issues occur when that person creates a show with obvious, worsening problems and won't listen to anyone else — and that is what happened with Rebeck.

A source who worked on Season 1 of Smash said, "Very quickly it just turned into kind of like — a kingdom or something. A dictatorship. Rebeck had a full writing staff, some of whom she hired and some of whom were hired for her. One person who had happily taken a job behind-the-scenes based on the pilot and the premise said: "She was this kick-ass woman showrunner who wasn't taking shit from the network.

Someone who had a very clear vision who was going to stand up to the network. They were all good things in the beginning. You know where this story's going! She had never been in charge of a television show before, so executive producer David Marshall Grant was tasked with helping Rebeck shepherd it day to day and to run the writers' room. He was nominated for a Tony Award. After a short time with her staff, Rebeck decided she wasn't interested in having a writers' room; at most, she wanted writers to do a first draft that she would then rewrite herself.

That's not a crime, of course — show creators like Matthew Weiner, Aaron Sorkin, and Amy Sherman-Palladino surround themselves by writers who don't really write the episodes, but provide help in other ways.

Rebeck, though, didn't want to be surrounded. In a thorough, excellent preview story in New York magazine, Rebeck told Jesse Green, "Writers' rooms really are not my thing, because I can only stand being in a room with people so many hours a day. And I feel like early drafts should be speedy because everyone changes their mind, so why spend a lot of time up front parsing sentences?

Her resentment toward Grant was palpable. Another former Smash employee said: "I think Rebeck was worried that Grant was meant to be her replacement. This isn't completely paranoid, as networks and producers do this to showrunners all the time, but I don't think Grant is the type to do something so ruthlessly political. And it was sort of tragic. He had great ideas. He has an amazing energy and great people skills.